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OUYA, the Android-based games console that raised 8.5 million on Kickstarter last year, is coming to Amazon, Best Buy and Gamestop in June 2013, according to

Ouya controller (Photo credit: Saad Faruque)

the Wall Street Journal. That means that when the public is (probably) getting its first look at the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony at E3, OUYA will already be hitting shelves.

This little upstart is far underpowered when compared to its big siblings. You won’t be playing Uncharted 4, or probably even 1, on an OUYA. IGN interviewed a couple of indie developers, who said that it was a little less powerful than the Xbox 360 – capable of something like late-era PS2 visuals. But it’s still brimming with potential. As we saw with the massive Kickstarter campaign, an open platform is something that the core market is hungry for, and soon we’ll see if the broader market feels the same way.

Whatever happens with the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony, their beefier hardware will encourage big, expensive games from developers with resources to burn. It’s the same progression we’ve seen from game consoles since the beginning. This is a step in a different direction. This is a console that can give a platform to smaller developers willing to take more risks, and it’s a welcome change. The press always treats the next big consoles with an air of inevitability – they have to happen because that’s the way it goes. OUYA, on the other hand, is exciting. OUYA is something new.

As Microsoft’s Phil Harrison reminds us, launching a console is very, very difficult. Even if you’ve got a name like Nintendo. But I wonder if that’s because people are imagining what it’s like to enter an already crowded space with big players. But Ouya is hoping to carve out its own space alongside the traditional market. CEO Julie Uhrman had this to say in the WSJ interview:

OUYA offers a very different value proposition to the gaming you can currently experience. It’s a box designed specifically for the television that leverages the screen, we support 3D gaming, HD, we support the controller, we added a touchpad to the controller. The kind of content you’ll see on OUYA, it’ll be inventive and creative and has never been on the television.

I’d much rather that this succeeds over another box full of powerful computer parts. For the sake of my free-time, I hope she’s right.